This invention provides for the movement of wire and bobbins, and more especially groups of wire and bobbins between different locations in a plant that manufactures communication cables. The invention eliminates manual handling of the bobbins and eliminates the use of manually operated cranes that move bobbins into position for storage or for delivery to a pairing station of a cable manufacturing plant.
The invention eliminates the necessity for a substantial part of the manual labor in a cable making plant; and more importantly, it eliminates damage to bobbins and the wire they carry resulting from improper manual handling of the bobbins and from misalignment of crane facilities with compartments of storage racks or other locations where a crane has heretofore been used to receive or deliver bobbins to other apparatus.
The invention includes a bobbin track that slopes downwardly toward a carriage track extending at right angles to the bobbin track along which a carriage runs which supports an elevator and elevator shaft. Chutes on opposite sides of the elevator can be lowered into positions to form extensions of the bobbin track. Bobbins accumulated on the bobbin track roll by gravity into the elevator which has another track for holding a full complement of bobbins from the first bobbin track.
The carriage moves the elevator, with the bobbins thereon, into alignment with compartments of an inventory storage rack which has compartments at different levels, and the elevator raises the bobbins into alignment with the particular compartment of the storage rack in which they are to be stored. The slope of the bobbin track on the elevator permits the bobbins to roll by gravity into the compartment of the storage rack.
The invention includes correlations of the combined parts of the transport system and provision by which an operator riding on the carriage at a control console can bring the elevator into the vicinity of a location at which it is to be aligned with bobbin tracks, and electronic controls take over from the manually operated controls to effect the final alignment of the carriage and elevator with the tracks to or from which bobbins are to be transferred.
Other objects, features and advantages of the invention will appear or be pointed out as the description proceeds.